Citizenship in Question
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I speak an open and disengaged language, dictated by no passion but that of humanity. . . . My country is the world, and my religion is to do good. — Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man I said, “They deported a citizen.” He said, “They can’t do that.” — Johann “Ace” Francis Diogenes (“the Cynic”), when asked where he came from, was said to have an- swered, “I am a citizen of the world” (he used the term now rendered in En- glish as “cosmopolitan”) (Laertius 1979 [1925], 6:2:64). Over the centuries, of course, much has been made of this as a theoretical matter. But, after reading this power ful collection of observations about the theory, practice, and forensics of modern citizenship, I thought of a diﬀ er ent (and, so far as I am aware, a unique) question about Diogenes’s assertion: What if he had been asked to prove it? Such a hy po thet i cal interrogation seems facetious, if not absurd. Who, apart perhaps from an extraterrestrial immigration agent, would ever have asked such a thing? Why would anyone ask for such proof ? What sort of proof could there possibly be? The answers all reduce to the most salient point of this book: nation- state citizenship is not only a theoretical construct about identity, rights, membership, the “right to remain,” and the like. Unlike the aftErword daniel kanstroom